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Mark Tyrrell
1) How to Feel Good When You Need to
Because self-confidence and feeling good has a major
'hormonal' element, you can change the way you feel by
re-living good times. If you can remember a time you felt
really self-confident, then excellent - use that! If not,
then use a time you felt contented or happy. Taking
deliberate control of your thoughts and emotions will have
an huge impact on your self-confidence and other areas of
your life.
2) Beating Self Consciousness, Confidence Enemy No.1
Although useful for learning about the impact you have on
others, too much self-consciousness is the No.1 enemy of
self-confidence. The trick is keeping your attention off
yourself when you need to. Here's how...
a) When you feel self-conscious, (you can usually tell
because you start to feel anxious), choose something outside
of yourself to focus on and study it in detail. For example:
examine a door, look at the different textures and shades of
colour, wonder about who made it and how and so on. The
important thing is that you're learning how to keep your
attention off yourself.
It is a good idea to practice this technique in private
first. Just sit quietly, practicing focusing firstly on your
own thoughts and then deliberately focusing outwards onto a
picture or piece of furniture.
b) Social self-confidence can be difficult to find
sometimes because it is unclear what you are 'supposed to
do'. In this event, concentrate on what your purpose in the
situation is. Whether you're there to:
• find out if you like the other people present
• make others feel comfortable
• find out some information
• make business contacts
• and so on...
It's much more difficult to feel self-conscious if your
mind is occupied with a task.
People are often most comfortable with others when
working towards a common goal. The common goal of
socializing could be making friends, the exchange of
mutually beneficial information; expanding your knowledge of
different types of people... it could be whatever you want
it to be! The key is to have an aim.
3) Watch Out for Undue Criticism - Especially Your
Own!
Have you noticed that people will speak to themselves in
a way they would never speak to others? You know the sort of
thing - you break a glass and it's "You stupid idiot. You
can't do anything right can you?"
Criticism that leaves the receiver feeling upset or
depressed is rarely useful.
Challenging your own assumptions about yourself and other
people can really help build self-confidence. Here's a few
to get you started:
1 Those confident-looking people have bad moments too -
you just don't get to hear about them!
2 If you feel under-confident, it doesn't mean other
people can tell. They're often too caught up with their 'own
stuff' to notice!
3 If you catch yourself saying things to yourself like
"I'm no good at anything" then rest assured, you're wrong
about that. Everyone can compose a sentence, get
successfully to the store, eat without choking and do a
million other things. Emotion can make things seem hopeless
when they rarely are.
Don't let yourself make sweeping statements about
yourself - in the long run it is this sort of thing that can
really damage your self-image. If this happens, say to
yourself calmly and gently, "Hold on a minute, that's not
true". If you can come up with some evidence that disproves
the sweeping statement, then even better. It may take a bit
of effort at first, but the impact on your self confidence
levels is huge.
Building self-esteem is not just about thinking good of
yourself, it's about not thinking bad for no reason!
4 Just because you have felt bad about yourself in the
past doesn't mean you're always going to feel that way. I
have seen hundreds of people surprise themselves once they
have learned how to build self confidence in a way that it
stays built!
The important thing is to get away from thinking "Why did
that happen?", or "Why do I feel this way?" and towards "How
would I like to feel?", "In what situations do I feel
confident?" or, "What do I need to learn in order to have
better self confidence in this situation?"
This change in thinking is so important that we devote
quite a bit of time to it on the Self Confidence Trainer.
5 Persevere and don't expect everything at once. Really
learn how to develop your self-confidence by following the
tips from this site and the free Self Confidence Course and
notice the small differences as they happen. Building good
self-confidence is a wonderful thing, and it's much easier
than you'd imagine. |
